Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Broken Promises Review

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is one of our first shows to return from a long and daunting Christmas Break. Of course the show left us with a decent cliffhanger. If you know just a little of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s history, the LMDs are pretty big. What are LMDs? LMD stands for Life Model Decoy and it was used to protect top people at S.H.I.E.L.D.. It all plays well with the events of Age of Ultron to provide a continuing theme for the Marvel Universe. It’s nice that this universe can continue to use all the story lines provided before them, since unlike the comics it has to grow or age.

Otherwise the plot flows in and out with the Inhuman thread that Marvel continues to throw down our throats. I have nothing against the Inhumans and it gives us a story to follow, but it is also a way to displace the X-Men (which we like more). Mace and Daisy get to go on a “rescue” mission to save the “Inhuman” in trouble. The resident political bad guy is a senator that happens to have a brother with Inhuman troubles. Creating the brother (good guy)/sister (Senator Nadeer)(bad girl) is kind of a typical conflict that we see in tons of stories. The motivations for the characters actually go back to the original Avengers movie. Which I still think that it’s cool when they reference the rest of the Marvel Universe.

Which brings us back to our local LMD Aida. The plan is to wipe her hard drive and start from scratch. Because Aida has read the DARKHOLD book she has become more aware of herself. The Darkhold actually allows itself to tie the show to the magical part of the Marvel Universe and a slight reference to Doctor Strange might have been noticed. With all that, Aida goes off the reservation and decides to get the book from S.H.I.E.L.D.. We all saw this coming and the show itself admits it.

One of the best part of the show is all the movie references that Mac makes, “Bloody thirsty robots that will rise up against their makers” or “Weird Science sex bot”. Plus they mention Terminator, Lawnmower Man, Maximum Overdrive, and Chopping Mall. Mac says it best, “The robot apocalypse is here.” It gives us an intro to a bad that was a bad guy, but then a good and back again.